SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY

Watching Yellowstone's Wolves

from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

... Yellowstone rangers say this is the best place on Earth to watch wolves in the wild. But 13 years after being reintroduced to Yellowstone, they remain polarizing animals, generating endless controversy and furious litigation.

On Friday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service took steps to revive a 2007 proposal to remove the gray wolf of the northern Rockies from the Endangered Species List. Environmentalists howled, calling it a last-gasp effort by the Bush administration to delist wolves.

The Fish and Wildlife Service had officially delisted the wolves in March, and afterward wildlife officials in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana developed management plans that included hunting seasons. In Wyoming, anyone could shoot a wolf at any time in most of the state.